


'cause you burned bright like a dying star

by philthestone



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, sad bears abound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2016048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wakes up to the beeping of his own heart. That, and loud voices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'cause you burned bright like a dying star

**Author's Note:**

> post-stid, angsty. this is a disclaimer.  
> reviews are uhura's peanut stew

He wakes up to the beeping of his own heart.

That, and loud voices.

 

“... goes in there! What part of the phrase ‘totally stress free environment’ do you not understand?”

“Doctor, I appreciate your concerns, but this simply can’t wait. There’s going to be a court marshal –”

“All due respect sir, but I don’t care if the goddamn galaxy is about to implode. No one goes in there unless say so, and I _don’t_ say so, so if you’d kindly haul your asses out of my sickbay, that would be very much appreciated!”

“Doctor –”

_“No.”_

“Damnit Mccoy, you can’t just kick us out! There are important political ramifications –”

“I don’t give a flying rat’s ass! He’s been goddamn comatose for two and a half weeks! He needs rest! A formal military briefing isn’t rest, Admiral, it’s anxiety-inducing! So if you don’t –”

“Might I remind you, Doctor Mccoy, that Kirk is a Starfleet officer –”

“He’s also a twenty-five year old kid who managed to save half the goddamn planet from your colossal screw-ups for the second time! Christ man, you can’t just –”

“You can’t possibly be blaming Starfleet for Marcus’s actions! The rest of the Admiralty had no knowledge of his plans, and you know it!”

“I’m not pointing fingers, _sir_ , but I might start if you don’t get the hell outta my hospital.”

“You wouldn’t dare –”

Angry footsteps lead the voices farther down the hallway until they fade away entirely, but he can still make out Bones’s “GET OUT!” a minute later. He breathes in through his nose and focuses on the steady beep of the heart monitor.

_If you don’t open your eyes, you can keep pretending that it’s all a dream._

He can’t remember the last time he had a normal dream. The night before the fiasco on Nibiru, he thinks.

_Beep._

It had involved Spock and a flowery apron.

_Beep._

And something about Gorns.

_Beep._

No blinding lights, no searing pains, no blank dead eyes or exploding ship.

_Beep._

His stomach rolls.

_Beep._

He has to open his eyes, he thinks, a split second before he jerks over the side of the bed and vomits.

***

Uhura visits the third day he’s up, her long hair pulled into its usual pristine ponytail and her glass earrings dangling with familiarity around her slim neck. She looks as beautiful as ever, and he tells her so, and this time she doesn’t roll her eyes or smack him on the arm like she usually does, which is weird.

“You’re supposed to roll your eyes,” he says, and she laughs, poking him in the arm lightly.

“Would it make you feel better if I did?”

About this thing in particular? “Yes.”

So she does. She does and he realizes that she’s aged maybe ten or fifteen years in the matter of two weeks, because there are bags under her eyes that never existed before (not even during finals week) and a fragility in her look (her, the one woman who he’s never seen look anything but strong, ever) that will haunt him for the next month. He apologizes.

He hopes that maybe she understands why.

They spend the rest of her visit playing one-sided blackjack, because no matter what he does he still can’t summon the energy to lift more than one card every three hours (pathetic, he thinks). When she leaves, she kisses his forehead and he tells himself that it’s the drugs that are making his eyes burn like that.

***

Gertrude is big and leafy and hypoallergenic and kind of his new best friend, so he thanks Sulu every single time he visits.

“No problem,” says the helmsman.

They watch fencing holo vids together and Jim makes Sulu swear that when he’s feeling better (like, ready to actually be able to go to the bathroom without passing out), the other man will teach him how to fence so that he can seem as totally awesome as Sulu is. He makes sure Jim knows exactly how to take care of Gertrude and tells the nurses funny stories about falling off giant drills and flying out of volcanoes and Jim half-grins (it’s painful) for the first time in what feels like a bajillion years, because if he tries really hard he can imagine the whole thing to be one whacky adventure.

Sulu leaves promising to bring back more holos and maybe try to sneak a katana past Bones, which is practically suicide, but if anyone can do it, he can.

***

Jim wishes that the medically-approved diet checklist at the foot of his bed included alcohol, because comforting a slightly-drunk slightly-angry very-upset Montgomery Scott is all the way up there on his list of Really Terrible Awful Things He Never Wants To Do Again alongside battling psycho Romulans and climbing into warp cores.

“I’m sorry I punched you in the face.”

Scotty makes a loud spluttering noise. It would be unattractive if anyone cared to notice.

“Will ye stop bloody apologizin’ fer everythin’? Fer Christ’s sake, if there’s anehthin’ that’s _not_ your bloody fault, et’s this! Ye cannae expect me te have come here te listen te your – your _apologies?_ Hell, Jim, if there’s anyone who should apologize, it’s _me_ –”

“Scotty –”

“I shouldnae quit, I _knew_ what ye were goin’ into an’ I shoulda _stayed,_ done sommat to stop ye, I dunno –”

“Scotty –”

“Ah’m a bloody failure, I am, to the lady an’ you and ev’ryone –”

“Scotty!”

It’s dark outside and Jim is surprised he hasn’t fallen asleep mid-sentence yet, but he convinces his used-to-be chief engineer not to feel bad about the whole quitting thing. When they give the ship back to me, Jim says, you can come back and make up for it.

 _If_ they give the ship back to me, a voice at the back of his head corrects.

***

Chekov drops by a week after Jim wakes up to his best friend telling him he was dead, and the kid looks like he’s been crying all seven days of it. Jim tells him not to worry, that everything’s fine (it’s not), and that just because some crazy shit happened and a whole lot of people died and Jim feels like he’s going to cry every goddamn minute of the day because Uhura looks broken and Spock talks even less than before and Bones – hell, Bones looks like he hasn’t slept in nearly a month (he hasn’t) and is missing some integral part of him that used to make him _Bones_ – it’s not the end of the world.

Chekov thanks him (for what?) and gives him a package that looks new but feels old and leaves looking better than Jim feels. It’s a book, an actual real-life honest-to-God _book_ , bound with paper and everything, and Jim wonders how the hell Chekov knows that he likes to collect books, that he’s got a dingy cardboard box of his dad’s old classics sitting somewhere in his quarters, worn and read more times than he’s gotten into a fight (a lot). Jim thinks absently that he’s never really tried Dostoyevsky and puts the book down beside his heart monitor and forgets about it for something like three days, but on the third day Spock has to sit in meetings with Admirals all day and Uhura is being interrogated for the twentieth time and Bones keeps looking at him as if he can’t believe Jim’s really there, so he picks up the book and finishes it in three hours and thinks that hey, at least his life isn’t as depressing as the Russians’.

***

He’s progressed to one or two tentative steps around the hospital ward, and it takes him all of twenty minutes to realize that all of the alterations to the Enterprise that Spock’s proposing are for reinforcing the warp core.

“I have been given access to the blueprints of the Vengance, and I believe that there are certain practices that could be put to use quite efficiently by Mister Scott and his coworkers –”

“No,” says Jim.

Spock frowns. Or at least, his eyebrows move infinitesimally lower on his forehead.

“It would be illogical not to take advantage of the benign advancements in Starfleet’s technology. I have not proposed anything that could be seen as an act of military reinforcement and as such do not understand your aversions to my suggestions.”

Translation: what the hell, Jim.

“No. We’re not using Marcus’s bat-shit crazy ship as blueprints for rebuilding the Enterprise.”

“The technology on that ship enabled their warp capabilities to withstand much greater shifts in gravitational balance than our own. Such an improvement could categorically improve the Enterprise’s efficiency during something akin to a five year mission, the prospect of which, to my knowledge, was extremely exciting to you.”

Spock’s unspoken frustration hangs in the air for a moment before floating down and settling heavily on Jim’s chest. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to breathe, so he presses his hand up against the wall to make sure his already-weak legs don’t betray him.

“No.”

“Jim –”

“We’re not revamping the whole damn ship because I died, Spock!”

“You are upset because you assume that it is your fault the Enterprise is being altered.”

“No, I’m not.”

“On the contrary, you entire attitude suggests a personal connection, perhaps of an emotional nature, to the suggestion that –”

“I’m not crazy!”

Spock stares at him.

“I never suggested any such thing, Captain.”

He can’t breathe.

“But you – you seemed – you _implied_ – I just – you can’t –” Jim feels like he’s hyperventilating.

“Jim.” There’s urgency in Spock’s tone now, that’s for sure. “You must calm yourself.” He’s half-risen from his chair, too. Why is it so damn difficult to _breathe_ –

“Perhaps I should alert Doctor Mccoy,” says Spock, standing abruptly and looking more scared than Jim could ever remember seeing him. “You are demonstrating all of the symptoms of a panic attack.”

_Shit._

“Just no – don’t change – please – can’t change – not for me – she can’t – don’t –”

There are spots dancing in front of his eyes and he’s pretty sure he can’t see anything but he feels someone’s iron grip on his shoulder and the door opening and there are lights flashing from somewhere, except that they’re not normal and he feels like the radiation is burning him from the inside again and _holy shit he can’t breathe –_

“What the hell happened in here?!”

Vaguely, he thinks that Bone’s sounds more panicked than he _is_.

“I was simply suggesting suitable alterations for the Enterprise, Doctor; you yourself told me that Jim is in need of an outside source of stimulus –” 

“I know what I said! Stay with me kid, come on!”

His knees hit the floor and he feels the sting of a hypo in his neck.

He has four more panic attacks over the course of the next month, and Spock does not bring up the Vengeance again.

***

Bones tries to get him to walk down the hall and back again, but Jim feels like collapsing after the first ten steps and nearly does, so Bones and Nurse Chapel support his pathetic ass all the way back to the bed and Jim wishes he were still dead.

He kind of wishes it less when Carol Marcus visits a few hours later (how Bones let her in is a mystery, considering Jim had nearly keeled over in the middle of the hall earlier), bringing a box of chocolates that Uhura helped her buy and a strained smile.

“If you try apologizing,” Jim tells her, “I will personally muster up the energy to get out of bed and shove you out of this ward.”

“You wouldn’t manhandle a lady, now, would you captain?” She deadpans it, and Jim feels some of the tension in his chest break, and he tries for a smile as strained as hers. They finish all of the chocolates in ten minutes.

It gets better, from there (he likes to tell himself).

Sort of.

Not really.

***

The next time Uhura visits, he tells himself that it’s his God-given mission on this Earth to make her smile, so as they sit together eating homemade steamed rice and peanut stew (“You can _cook?”_ ) he spouts off as many ridiculous jokes and pick-up lines and impersonations that he can think of. Twenty minutes in, her weak grin erupts into a full-blown giggle and he can’t remember it exactly, but pretty soon they’re both laughing so hard they start crying, and then they’re just crying.

“Why’d you bring me back?” he sobs into her shoulder, muffled and barely audible, and he doesn’t think that she hears him, but she does.

***

It’s two weeks after It Happened and he’s pretty sure he’s just made Bones cry and he wants to slam his fist into the wall, but he knows that that would probably break his knuckles and that would just be more shit for his friends to deal with. He should have realized that responding to “could you stop being a pain in the ass and take your goddamn meds” with “if I’m such a pain in the ass maybe you should have left me dead” was probably not one of his better ideas. He feels it even more acutely when M’Benga checks in on him later that afternoon to make sure he’s eaten his pudding (it’s not half bad, he just doesn’t have an appetite) and he doesn’t see his best friend’s familiar grumpy face hovering over his bed.

He tries to sleep, but ends up waking up in the middle of the night because the damn pudding decided that it liked sitting on the floor of the hospital ward better than inside his stomach.

***

Spock tells him that repairs on the Enterprise are well underway and that majority of the Admiralty is in favour of giving him back the ship. Jim tries smiling, and Spock raises an eyebrow.

“I had assumed that you would be more enthusiastic upon receiving such news, Jim.”

“Oh, I’m hyped. You’ve never met a more enthusiastic guy in your life, Spock.”

“Doctor Mccoy is under the impression that you are suffering from the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. I am inclined to agree.”

Jim stares at him.

“I’m fine.” He’s not.

“Jim, there is no reason for you to deny your own condition. In such situations, it is normal for a human being to experience such symptoms –”

“I don’t have a _condition –_ ”

“You are not behaving like yourself –” 

“You don’t even know what _myself_ is, Spock, so don’t come in here and lecture me –”

“Perhaps not, but I am making a sincere effort to advance in that area –”

“Maybe I don’t _want_ you to ‘advance’ –”

“I am not the only one who has noticed abnormal behavioural patterns, Jim. Both Leonard and Nyota have expressed concern regarding your psychological well-being, and as they are more adept than both you and I in areas most applicable to circumstances such as these –”

He tries not to snap. He really does.

_“Circumstances such as these?_ What, because someone else has been brought back from the goddamn _dead_ before?” His hands unconsciously curl into fists. “I’m not a child, Spock! I know I’m messed up!”

Spock opens his mouth. Closes it.

Jim’s on a roll.

“You know why I’m screwed in the head? You really wanna know? Well – aside from – from lots of shit that happened ages ago and I – just –” he’s struggling to formulate words, but he needs to get this out, needs to yell and rant and _blame somebody_ , or he swears to God he’ll implode. “Because out of all the hundreds of men and women who died on that damn ship, _me_ –" he lets out a harsh (broken) sound that might possibly be a laugh, if he cared enough to think about it "- the person who probably _least_ deserves a second chance – was brought back by some – some never-testing super-blood transfusion from the guy who caused my death in the first place!”

Jim’s breathing hard, and his heart monitor is beeping like crazy, and he’s definitely going to regret this later, but he doesn’t care.

Spock is silent.

“What? You haven’t got some – some – _logical_ retort? Ha!” The laugh sounds derisive and undeserved and cruel and broken to his own ears. “News-flash: logic doesn’t apply to ‘circumstances such as these’, Spock!”

The room goes quiet. Spock is simply staring at him, mouth infinitesimally open and face characteristically (or is it uncharacteristically, truly?) devoid of emotion, and every moment of it is making Jim angrier.

_“Say something, damn it!”_

Finally,

“Fascinating.”

_“What?”_

Spock continues, and suddenly there is an ice in his voice that Jim was not aware he was capable of producing. “I believe I said that it is fascinating how incredibly self-centered and arrogant a single person is capable of being.”

Jim feels as though all the air has been sucked out of him.

“It is _fascinating,_ ” Spock continues, his voice rising imperceptibly, “that you do not, even for a moment, consider the pain that your death would have – _did_ – cause all those who care for you. Did you even once entertain the thought that perhaps Leonard refused to obtain sufficient amounts of sleep for days on end because he could not bear the thought of never seeing his closest friend breathe again? Did you not imagine that Nyota lied for you to the face of three different Admirals in three consecutive meetings for fear that if they understood how you were being revived, they would put a stop to it? Did you not stop to think for one minute that I, and so many other people, sacrificed all that we did because we could not accept to live in a world without our friend?” Spock’s hands are shaking, Jim realizes, if only barely, but his back is still ramrod straight.

_Shit._

“Spock ... I – I didn’t –”

“You did not believe yourself to be important enough,” supplies Spock coldly; he has hidden his hands behind his back. “You assumed that the sole reason for your revival was whether or not you ‘deserved it’, as you said – though many would argue that you did, and that your concerns are unfounded. You did not think that perhaps, the people who worked so desperately to bring you back did so partially for themselves; because they could not live without you.”

It takes a moment for Jim to realize that he’s crying for real now (he really needs to stop doing that), that tears are streaming down his cheeks because oh, _God_ , he’s screwed up this time, and why does he always screw up? And shit, God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize, I didn’t think, I couldn’t possibly imagine –

“Captain.” Quietly.

“I’m sorry,” he finally chokes, gasps. “I’m – I’m _so sorry_.”

Spock is silent, and looks pained, as though he did not realize what sort of a reaction his honesty would trigger.

Jim presses his hands to his eyes and tries to stop sobbing like a little kid, but it doesn’t seem to be working.

“Jim.”

He looks up.

If he didn’t know any better, he would say that it couldn’t possibly be tenderness that he sees in the Vulcan’s eyes. Spock looks as though he’s about to step forward, but thinks better of it and remains where he is. “It is not your fault.”

He thinks that maybe, “it” is referring to more than one thing.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, and Spock moves forward anyway and a too-warm hand finds his shoulder, propped up and weak against his pillows. He can feel the heat through the thin fabric of his hospital gown.

“It is alright, Jim. Though you do owe an apology to Doctor Mccoy.”

His heart sinks. “He told you about that?”

Spock raises an eyebrow.

“It was logical to deduce that since Doctor Mccoy has been avoiding you when you are awake, the two of you underwent some sort of emotional upheaval that – ”

“Uh, yeah, okay.” He can feel the tears drying on his cheeks and suddenly almost feels normal. A familiarity he has come to associate with Spock calling him out on his bullshit in monotone, and something involving his two friends putting aside their differences to glare at him together. “I’ll talk to him.”

The eyebrow climbs higher. Jim sighs, shaky and still-vulnerable.

“I _promise._ ” Spock nods and removes his hand from Jim’s shoulder, and Jim feels uncomfortably cold. He turns, as though he’s going to walk to the door, but hesitates.

“Jim ... I have experienced firsthand your ... while sometimes rash ... _admirable_ devotion to those closest to you.” He pauses, and Jim takes a deep breath.

“I – I know I can be reckless sometimes –”

“An apology is unnecessary, and therefore illogical.” Some of the tension has left Spock’s shoulders, but he still looks uncertain. “I would ask you to keep in mind that, when a part of a socio-communal relationship that demands a certain amount of devotion and emotional attachment from all members, it is not only you who cares for others.” A pause. Jim hopes he doesn’t look as confused as he feels. Spock continues, “do not hesitate to believe that we are all willing to provide the necessary emotional and physical support, in any given scenario, in order to ensure your comfort.”

“ ... what?”

Spock sighs, ever so slightly and something of his old self. “I believe the Terran expression would be, ‘we got your back’, Jim.”

And suddenly Jim finds himself smiling (actually smiling!); weak, but easy and normal and more sincere than ever before.

“Thanks, Spock.”

Spock stands straighter and tugs the hem of his uniform down mechanically.

“I have duties to attend to, Captain. I trust that you will rest yourself. Perhaps when we next meet, a game of chess could be a viable option for a stimulating activity? I do not believe Doctor Mccoy would veto such an idea.”

The smile stretches wider. “That sounds great.”

There is something about the mirrored sincerity of Spock’s look that makes Jim think that his apology has been accepted. He turns to leave and Jim pushes himself to sit up straighter on the pillows.

“Hey, Spock – wait.”

The Vulcan turns around and raises an eyebrow inquisitively.

Jim hesitates. “I ... really, thank you. For everything.”

“You are very welcome, Jim.”

It gets better, from there (he knows). 

Truly.


End file.
